TLDR; There's a lot of good ideas here, but it's a buggy mess that isn't worth the time in its current state. Lukewarm 4.5/10.

The Good
[ + ] graphics are on point (albeit the lighting can be pretty bled out on high settings)
[ + ] dual monitor friendly, allows Windows' built in shift+window+arrow
[ + ] game settings can be edited on the fly while still being in game
[ + ] automatic Unstuck function (with an easy manual Unstuck button)
[ + ] Squadron/companion system is mostly functional & fun to use (though the AI...)
[ + ] (mostly) enjoyable combat system with basic directional swings
[ + ] responsive & fluid directional block system that allows you to turn off Fluid Blocking & Block Assist

Worth Mentioning
[ -/+ ] Fur does not look good/exposes the fabric underneath to instead look like hair that grew out your characters shoulders, and most armor/gear clips (cape+quiver = forever clipping)
[ -/+ ] No swimming; you just get auto-warped out if you end up in too high of water. While this in itself isn't an issue, even knee high water will auto-warp you and can become problematic in the swamp areas against enemies who have no such problems.
[ -/+ ] Bandit patrols walk Land of the Dead style at the bottom of rivers while patrolling/heading to their destination/heading to you (don't bother trying to fight them there, they turn into teleporting wizards near rivers)
[ -/+ ] Housing tents/Houses have storage that you cannot stop villagers from infinitely taking stuff out of, as they want absolutely nothing (outside of weapons/armor, it seems) stored in there at any point in time unless you make every single other storage container in the entirety of your save not accept that specific item type. And they will BEELINE to them to clear them out when you build a new storage & don't have the option checked for a couple seconds (every single villager that had the action queued up will still take an inventory full of whatever it is to the new storage, too). Drove my group nuts
[ -/+ ] Pretty non-existent character customisation that shares assets with NPCs
[ -/+ ] No in-game gamma control
[ -/+ ] Auto-run is actually auto-walk seeing as hitting shift/starting to run cancels it & running while starting it automatically drops you to a walk

The Bad
[ - ] There are a LOT of bugs. Game crashing, game breaking, save nuking bugs.
[ - ] Multiplayer players will be kicked almost every single time you disassemble a Dirt Road
[ - ] Sensitivity settings are bleh; Controller gets full control of its sensitivity with # specifics (camera, combat camera + ranged aiming camera) but KB+M is limited to ONLY a generic camera sensitivity %
[ - ] The UI is awful. You have no control of its resolution scaling, words barely fit their containers in 1920x1080, there's no use of color differentiation, you can't zoom in close enough to map to actually see all the symbols in a large settlement, herb symbols are both too small and too similar to the map colors, the crafting box for villagers makes you scroll through giant craft menus instead of the few tasks you have on that bench, etc etc etc
[ - ] Lots of armor/weapons, but the difference between them is nonexistant to minuscule (or just plain worse, like 1 to 2 armor increase for 2 to 5% across the board speed decrease) and it ends up becoming inventory/crafting menu bloat that is a pain to navigate through
[ - ] The game forces you to initiate your first liberation while still in Tier 1 to reach Tier 2, and opponents you now must face in large numbers are Brigands wearing full armor/using Tier 3 weapons. You do not have any defensive buildings made available to you and they will one shot you and your companions, two at most in full armor, while most of your attacks bounce off them for little to no damage. Once you liberate your first town, you're now forced to deal with Brigands on the constant (as they have their own raid timer & always come in full force) and this difficulty spike discomfort persists all throughout Tier 2 (though I did have a couple good laughs at the militia being swatted around like flies every time I tried to use them to help with reclamation parties).
[ - ] Raids are extremely underwhelming, especially in comparison to reclamation parties, and quickly become nuisances rather than actual threats
[ - ] You cannot stop villagers from taking materials off of stations, including when you've got a giant crafting queue (for both yourself and the villagers) on the same bench that's actively being worked on.
[ - ] You cannot stop villagers from taking (or eating) materials put on the research bench
[ - ] Majority of things are either villager specific (i.e forester & the consistent ability to hunt birds) or they do it miles more efficiently in half the time/durability/risk/headache. While I do understand that this game is a Sim, being so heavily discouraged from doing everything except controlling building/resource placement & very basic trading/fetch quests means I'm watching the game play and/or going AFK for far longer than I am actually playing the game.
[ - ] Winter in its entirety. It's not an engaging mechanic that changes how anything functions in the game; all it does is give artificial time bloat to the games length because a variety of important resources are now frozen for the 2 to 10 in game days it stays around. I didn't even notice a cold debuff existed until being over 60 days into the game, and even then I promptly forgot about it as being cold does nothing seeing as you're already forced to keep food buffs rolling 24/7 to manage stamina to begin with. Warm clothes are not a thing, frozen farms do nothing to dent the insane stockpiles you'll have going before they come around, and you don't have to manage cold at the camp nor do they impact patrols/villages/trade. I never once had winter last less than 3 in game days.
[ - ] Building in most aspects. I was originally pretty happy with clicking to build each part, similar to The Forest, but the carpal tunnel simulator that is the Bloomery alone completely changed this opinion. Then you get into Tier 2 buildings that require you to use a Construction Hammer: each little node is no longer just 1 click done, it's now a 3 to 10 seconds smack it with a hammer animation. And each building has easily over 60 individual nodes to build, while you cannot queue up building clicks or make your character automatically build the nodes on the building you're standing in
[ - ] Unfortunately, they didn't make the moving system any better. Not only do you have to repeat the process in reverse (including every single one of those 3 to 10 second smack it with a hammer animations), you also have to repeat the process AGAIN to rebuild it in the new area.
[ - ] Doing ANY mining as the player is very punishing. It's basically a ratio of Get 10 Rough Stones, Get 1 of the Ore you want (or 20 to 2/30 to 3, depending on gathering level). And you have to hold the mouse down for the entire time, without the ability to tab out
[ - ] While Fast Travel is nice to have, your companions + militia do not travel with you & have to walk across the map to join you. ANYTHING hostile being anywhere near them will also X that travel spot out and make them unusable, forcing you to make one every so many meters to ensure you can actually use the travel function.
[ - ] No dopamine hits to be found here, unless you consider being given endless piles of Renown upon Renown in an already endless sea of Renown to be a reward. The best you'll get is some Cauldron-cooked stews and nails as there's no gear drops, no item rarities, no actual rewards for clearing bandit camps, and nothing of interest in a single chest.

TLDR; There's a lot of good ideas here, but it's a buggy mess that isn't worth the time in its current state. Lukewarm 4.5/10. [b] [u] The Good [/u] [/b] [ + ] graphics are on point (albeit the lighting can be pretty bled out on high settings) [ + ] dual monitor friendly, allows Windows' built in shift+window+arrow [ + ] game settings can be edited on the fly while still being in game [ + ] automatic Unstuck function (with an easy manual Unstuck button) [ + ] Squadron/companion system is mostly functional & fun to use (though the AI...) [ + ] (mostly) enjoyable combat system with basic directional swings [ + ] responsive & fluid directional block system that allows you to turn off Fluid Blocking & Block Assist [b] [u] Worth Mentioning [/u] [/b] [ -/+ ] Fur does not look good/exposes the fabric underneath to instead look like hair that grew out your characters shoulders, and most armor/gear clips (cape+quiver = forever clipping) [ -/+ ] No swimming; you just get auto-warped out if you end up in too high of water. While this in itself isn't an issue, even knee high water will auto-warp you and can become problematic in the swamp areas against enemies who have no such problems. [ -/+ ] Bandit patrols walk Land of the Dead style at the bottom of rivers while patrolling/heading to their destination/heading to you (don't bother trying to fight them there, they turn into teleporting wizards near rivers) [ -/+ ] Housing tents/Houses have storage that you cannot stop villagers from infinitely taking stuff out of, as they want absolutely nothing (outside of weapons/armor, it seems) stored in there at any point in time unless you make every single other storage container in the entirety of your save not accept that specific item type. And they will BEELINE to them to clear them out when you build a new storage & don't have the option checked for a couple seconds (every single villager that had the action queued up will still take an inventory full of whatever it is to the new storage, too). Drove my group nuts [ -/+ ] Pretty non-existent character customisation that shares assets with NPCs [ -/+ ] No in-game gamma control [ -/+ ] Auto-run is actually auto-walk seeing as hitting shift/starting to run cancels it & running while starting it automatically drops you to a walk [b] [u] The Bad [/u] [/b] [ - ] There are a LOT of bugs. Game crashing, game breaking, save nuking bugs. [ - ] Multiplayer players will be kicked almost every single time you disassemble a Dirt Road [ - ] Sensitivity settings are bleh; Controller gets full control of its sensitivity with # specifics (camera, combat camera + ranged aiming camera) but KB+M is limited to ONLY a generic camera sensitivity % [ - ] The UI is awful. You have no control of its resolution scaling, words barely fit their containers in 1920x1080, there's no use of color differentiation, you can't zoom in close enough to map to actually see all the symbols in a large settlement, herb symbols are both too small and too similar to the map colors, the crafting box for villagers makes you scroll through giant craft menus instead of the few tasks you have on that bench, etc etc etc [ - ] Lots of armor/weapons, but the difference between them is nonexistant to minuscule (or just plain worse, like 1 to 2 armor increase for 2 to 5% across the board speed decrease) and it ends up becoming inventory/crafting menu bloat that is a pain to navigate through [ - ] The game forces you to initiate your first liberation while still in Tier 1 to reach Tier 2, and opponents you now must face in large numbers are Brigands wearing full armor/using Tier 3 weapons. You do not have any defensive buildings made available to you and they will one shot you and your companions, two at most in full armor, while most of your attacks bounce off them for little to no damage. Once you liberate your first town, you're now forced to deal with Brigands on the constant (as they have their own raid timer & always come in full force) and this difficulty spike discomfort persists all throughout Tier 2 (though I did have a couple good laughs at the militia being swatted around like flies every time I tried to use them to help with reclamation parties). [ - ] Raids are extremely underwhelming, especially in comparison to reclamation parties, and quickly become nuisances rather than actual threats [ - ] You cannot stop villagers from taking materials off of stations, including when you've got a giant crafting queue (for both yourself and the villagers) on the same bench that's actively being worked on. [ - ] You cannot stop villagers from taking (or eating) materials put on the research bench [ - ] Majority of things are either villager specific (i.e forester & the consistent ability to hunt birds) or they do it miles more efficiently in half the time/durability/risk/headache. While I do understand that this game is a Sim, being so heavily discouraged from doing everything except controlling building/resource placement & very basic trading/fetch quests means I'm watching the game play and/or going AFK for far longer than I am actually playing the game. [ - ] Winter in its entirety. It's not an engaging mechanic that changes how anything functions in the game; all it does is give artificial time bloat to the games length because a variety of important resources are now frozen for the 2 to 10 in game days it stays around. I didn't even notice a cold debuff existed until being over 60 days into the game, and even then I promptly forgot about it as being cold does nothing seeing as you're already forced to keep food buffs rolling 24/7 to manage stamina to begin with. Warm clothes are not a thing, frozen farms do nothing to dent the insane stockpiles you'll have going before they come around, and you don't have to manage cold at the camp nor do they impact patrols/villages/trade. I never once had winter last less than 3 in game days. [ - ] Building in most aspects. I was originally pretty happy with clicking to build each part, similar to The Forest, but the carpal tunnel simulator that is the Bloomery alone completely changed this opinion. Then you get into Tier 2 buildings that require you to use a Construction Hammer: each little node is no longer just 1 click done, it's now a 3 to 10 seconds smack it with a hammer animation. And each building has easily over 60 individual nodes to build, while you cannot queue up building clicks or make your character automatically build the nodes on the building you're standing in [ - ] Unfortunately, they didn't make the moving system any better. Not only do you have to repeat the process in reverse (including every single one of those 3 to 10 second smack it with a hammer animations), you also have to repeat the process AGAIN to rebuild it in the new area. [ - ] Doing ANY mining as the player is very punishing. It's basically a ratio of Get 10 Rough Stones, Get 1 of the Ore you want (or 20 to 2/30 to 3, depending on gathering level). And you have to hold the mouse down for the entire time, without the ability to tab out [ - ] While Fast Travel is nice to have, your companions + militia do not travel with you & have to walk across the map to join you. ANYTHING hostile being anywhere near them will also X that travel spot out and make them unusable, forcing you to make one every so many meters to ensure you can actually use the travel function. [ - ] No dopamine hits to be found here, unless you consider being given endless piles of Renown upon Renown in an already endless sea of Renown to be a reward. The best you'll get is some Cauldron-cooked stews and nails as there's no gear drops, no item rarities, no actual rewards for clearing bandit camps, and nothing of interest in a single chest.